was starting in the royal gardens, the princess was brought onto
the upper floor balcony opposite, and the mass of her hair,
decorated with dazzling jewels, was released. All the royal envoys
(which king was to be bothered to personally attend a lunch at
this puny kingdom?) forgot the meal and stared open-mouthed
as a cascade of dark, bejewelled hair tumbled down all the way
to the ground.
His Majesty’s calculations were a resounding success. At the next
gala, the place was crawling with kings and princes, come to
witness the princess’s extraordinarily luxuriant hair with their own
eyes. That was followed by a spate of invitations for His Majesty
from big and small states. Even Delhi Durbar began to invite him
over for really flimsy reasons – the real stamp of success if there
ever was one. The ‘hair festival’ was established as a national
event country-wide. Within three years the kingdom (not its
people) had a spanking new identity of its own.
Obviously, no one had the time to ask the Princess how she felt
about what was happening. His Majesty’s task, of course, was the
least enviable. On his shoulders rested the most delicate task –
he had to organize the displays of the princess’s hair at just the
right times, coordinate the propagation of its legend, and rouse
the curiosity and com